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Recording Game Sound in OBS, and Isolating Everything Else

Written by Josh Heng on
InstructionsSoundRecordingEducationVideoGames

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a popular, open source program for recording videos and livestreaming. In this post, I will explain how you can isolate your audio sources in OBS using the free program Voicemeeter Banana in a real life example - only recording Minecraft sounds whilst playing music on Spotify.

Prerequisites

  • Windows 10 PC with administrator privileges
  • Basic knowledge of OBS Studio. This blog assumes you already have a basic, working scene

Voicemeeter Banana Installation

To begin, install Voicemeeter Banana from their website. You only need the EXE file (the second option) and must reboot your computer after installation.

Once your computer has restarted, open Voicemeeter from the start menu. You should be greeted with a window similar to this:

A screenshot of the starting configuration of Voicemeeter

At first it can look complicated, but that's because it can do so much more than we will be using it for. If you would be interested in another post on other functionalites such as wireless audio transmission or piping different inputs to different outputs, leave a comment below!

The first thing to do is to sort out the output. Do this by clicking A1 on the top right, and select the speakers or headphones that you are using. If there is a choice between WDM and MME, go with WDM.

A screenshot of Voicemeeter with the A1 button and WDM Speakers option highlighted
With our output configured, here's a brief rundown of the controls we will use and what we will do:

  • We will pipe all audio through this software through two different inputs. All we are using Voicemeeter for is the fact that we can have two distinct inputs, one of which we can set OBS to use
  • Item 1 is the master fader. This controls the master volume for your speakers/headphones
  • Item 2 is the normal Voicemeeter VAIO virtual input. We will use this for all our normal computer sounds - the ones we don't want to hear in OBS
  • Item 3 is the secondary Voicemeeter AUX virtual input. We will use this for Minecraft - the program we want to hear in OBS

A screenshot of Voicemeeter with the master output fader, Voicemeeter VAIO input and Voicemeeter AUX input highlighted
Next, we need to configure Windows to pipe all audio through VoiceMeeter. To do this, open the App volume and device preferences menu by:

  1. Right clicking on the speaker icon in the bottom toolbar
  2. Clicking Open Sound settings
  3. Scrolling down and opening App volume and device preferences under Advanced sound options

Here, we can set the output of the master volume and any apps individually. Set the master volume output to VoiceMeeter Input, and the program you would like to use in OBS to VoiceMeeter Aux Input.

A screenshot of App volume and device preferences with the master and Minecraft outputs highlighted
Now let's check our sound is being piped through the program correctly. Any Minecraft sounds should show up on the Voicemeeter AUX input, and all other sounds should show up on the Voicemeeter VAIO input. These should both combine in the output on the right.
A screenshot of Voicemeeter with the fader indicators highlighted
If it all works, fantastic! That's the hard work done - now all that's left is setting up OBS to only use our Voicemeeter AUX input:

  1. Create a new source in your scene
  2. Set this source to Audio Output Capture
  3. Set the device to VoiceMeeter Aux Input

Finally, mute the default Desktop Audio source in the Audio Mixer.

A screenshot of OBS with the Audio Mixer highlighted
... and that's everything! Try recording a video and see if it works.

Closing Down

When you're finished, simply close Voicemeeter and switch your audio settings back to default in Windows.